


Carefully Tended

by CopperCaravan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Emil Hawke, Gen, Origin Story, Sibling Bonding, Siblings, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 14:24:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6662395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I really just wanted to write something about Carver & Hawke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carefully Tended

**Author's Note:**

> -Emil is nb but since most of this takes place before that comes up, I opted to tag under female Hawke.  
> -I can't believe I feel the need to clarify but: this is not an incest fic. At all.

Da says First Day is a bunch of bull. He says the year doesn’t truly start anew until the plough cleaves the field in two then three then four, acres and acres of yet unsown soil, freshly turned. A new year, now, uncultivated and waiting to _be_ something.

“Emil, wake up.” Her father’s voice, soft and scruffy as his beard against her ear. The sky still starry and pale with early morning. Her heart already racing, already sure, already leaping faster than her little legs can carry her out of bed, through the door, into her boots.

The Planting—this Second First Day—is her favourite day of the year (leagues ahead of her name day, with her mother’s too-tight dresses and disdain for dirt and fun). It doesn’t always come on the same day every year—rarely ever does, really—a week early, a week late, but Emil has learned to _feel_ for it. She knows the cold, dragged on far too long this winter as it does every winter. And she knows the weeks and weeks and bloody _weeks_ of rain, when the ground’s far too soft and squelchy to hold seedlings in straight rows. And she knows the way the air starts to smell right before Spring’s fully come to rest on the farmlands.

Fereldan to her very toes, Da says. Just like him.

Mother’s not to be helping today, not with the baby—no, the _babies_ , Da said—coming so soon. Any day now, they keep on telling her. Any day now and she’s to have little brothers or little sisters or even, maybe, one of each. Emil doesn’t much care what they turn out to be, only that they don’t make a habit of squealing. Mother says they all mustn’t make any extra noise, not since Emil’s... “incident” late last year. Not since the snow and frost had swirled around her, all beautiful and soft and she’d thought, just this once, that her mother would be pleased, for it was just the sort of thing her mother always called “graceful.” But that hadn’t been the word she got and not even the pride in her father’s eyes, not even his grin and his hugs and his promises had been enough to stop the guilty roiling down in her tummy. Spoiled milk, it had felt like, all rushing around and making her face hot with shame because her Mother wouldn’t—couldn’t—take it back. “Magic.” Like she was holding a pair of soiled underclothes, shovelling cow manure over the fences lining the fields, tossing rotten food to the hogs through the back window in the kitchen.

Doesn’t matter, she supposes. So long as the babies are quiet. So long as the babies aren’t “magic,” aren’t like her. She’s afraid to tell her da, afraid he’ll think she thinks he’s bad too.

He says she can push the plough this year—her first time ever!—and she sets to work, thinking how she’s just like him: dark hair, all mangy like a good and proper stray, and “Fereldan to her very toes,” and _magic._ Pushing the plough is more difficult than she’d thought; always seemed so easy when he did it. And her lines aren’t quite straight either: there’s a big curve in the middle of one. It’s one of the Corn Rows. And she knows her mother would tell her to do it over but her tiny arms and legs are pulsing sore and Da yanks her up from under her arms and sets her, giggling, on his shoulders. “That’s my girl,” he says, and Hawke’s glad again that it’s The Planting and she doesn’t have to wear “a little lady’s proper clothes” today.

It’s when she’s spreading the dirt over the seeds, following behind him one row at a time—they’ve just finished the corn, even the row with the curve in the middle—there’s a shrill sound, nothing like her mother’s voice but Emil knows it anyway. The babies.

Da knows too. His head jerks up and a few little okra seeds fall from his hand right into their little hole, and then he just drops them all to pile on the ground. “Emil,” he says, already heading for the door of their home. “Go get Miriam. Hurry.”

And so she does.

They will not let her in the room and she’s no desire to sit and wait in the kitchen all by herself, so she returns to the fields, alone this time, and finishes smoothing dirt over the okra. It’s the peas, after that. Nearly ten whole rows of peas. And then some beans. When she reaches the fence near the house, she starts the tomatoes, knowing they’ll need to be tied up as they grow, else the weight of their fruit will drag them to the ground. In the next field, she knows to plant the squash. She doesn’t much care for squash but they’re called “Crook Necks” and that’s always made her laugh. After that, she’s done a half a row of onions when her father’s voice rings out from their doorway. She doesn’t come right off; instead she smoothes one more layer of soil and looks around at the work she’s done. All on her own—or mostly—this year. This has been a year of firsts. And this Second First Day has been full of them too.

“Look at you,” Da says, having come up behind her and dropped a heavy, comfortable hand on her little shoulder. “Did all this work! Just like your da, aren’t you?”

She nods, a proud smirk pulling up the corners of her lips before she remembers: Mother! The babies!

He reminds her not to run twice before she even reaches their bedroom (and once more when she scrambles for their bed and Mother, holding two bundles atop it). Her mother is tired, that much is clear, but she seems a soft sort of happy, a slow smile spreading over her face that Emil can’t quite remember ever falling on her, though she knows it must have happened...

“Emilia,” her mother says, smile still plastered there. Emil prickles a bit at the word. It feels like _magic_ but not half so good and guilty. Just like soiled underclothes, and manure, and rotten food for the pigs. But she presses that down, even stomps her foot to make sure it stays, and crawls carefully onto the bed. “This is Bethany,” her mother says, eyes still on the little bundles, Da’s dark hair—Emil’s dark hair—peeking out of the swaddling rags. “And this is Carver.”

“I wanted to name them Penelope,” Emil says, lip already pouting.

Her mother almost laughs. “And what to call Carver then?”

“They can both be Penelope,” Emil explains. It’s hardly complicated, after all.

At the sound of her name, the dog lopes into the room from her place in the kitchen. Vigilant, she’d been. All morning. They should’ve known. “You already have a Penelope,” Da says, nodding his head toward the mabari and reaching out for one of the bundles. _Carver._

He rocks the babe a bit, sort of bounces it really, and Emil remembers hopping up and down on his knee when she’d been just a bit smaller. Probably these babies will be small enough for that. And there’s two babies. Da only has two knees. Her lips screw up as the jealousy washes over her and she feels it, though she’s knows she ought not to. “Don’t make that face, Emilia,” Mother says, and Emil smoothes out the lines of her face the way Mother makes her smooth her dress with her hands. _Pat, pat and then hands in the lap. Remember to cross your ankles, young lady._ She tries to lean up and over her mother’s arm, to look into Bethany’s face. She wants to reach over and pet her—careful, of course—but just to see if the hair and the skin are as soft and squishy as they look.

But Mother whispers “She’s sleeping.”

Carver, over in her father’s arms, lets out a little squeaky cry.

“Do you want to hold him?”

Not if he’s going to make so much noise, she doesn’t.

But she does. She wants to poke the little nose and be careful of the little ears and touch the little fingers barely curled around the cloths. She nods.

Da sends her to the chair in the corner and has her cradle her arms, the way she had when the piglets were born and he’d placed them into her waiting grasp. Babies are different, she realizes, and she almost jerks away—what if she drops him or breaks him or makes him cry? What if he makes too much noise and the Templars come? What if he doesn’t like her? What if he doesn’t ever like her?—but Da is slow and careful when he hands her the bundle.

Sort of weighty. Heavier than she’d thought. And squirmy.

But he doesn’t cry and Emil lets out a big breath she hadn’t known she was holding.

Da returns to the bed, brings one of Mother’s hands to his lips and Emil hears him whisper _I love you’s,_ careful not to wake Bethany.

Emil looks down into Carver’s tiny little face, all squinched up and red and patchy, and dares to brush the dark hair away with one finger, and she thinks that it’s alright if she can’t name him Penelope.

_I love you,_ she thinks. Even if Da only has two knees and even if she’s _magic_ and even if her rows aren’t straight. This is her favourite day.

**Author's Note:**

> Hawke's mabari is named Penelope but Hawke just calls her "Pea." Because Hawke likes peas.


End file.
